Used to US planes overhead, Praguers ignored sirens during tragic air raid of February 1945

Saturday is the 70th anniversary of one of the blackest days experienced by
the Czech lands during WWII, when US planes dropped some 150 bombs over
Prague, leaving 700 people dead and levelling around 100 buildings. Foggy
conditions had led the American airmen to mistake the city for Germany’s
Dresden, over 100 kilometres to the north. I discussed the tragic error
–
and other aspects of the events of February 14, 1945 – with historian
Jan
Adamec.

The raid took place in the middle of the day and there was very high
loss
of life. Was that in part due to the fact that the people of Prague
didn’t make use of the city’s air raid shelters?

“It’s kind of the tragedy of this raid that the people of Prague
expected that the bombers they saw – and which they greeted – would as
usual fly over the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to hit the
territory
of the Third Reich, to Germany.

Was that time – on February 14, 1945 – the only time that there
was a
major Allied bombing of Prague?

“There was an incident in November 1944 where an electricity power plant
in the Holešovice district was hit. But until this February 1945 raid
Prague was not the target.

“Later Prague was bombed, in March 1945, but that was an intentional
bombing targeted at weapon producing capacities in the industrial
districts
of Prague, in Libeň, Kbely and Vysočany, where 245 people were
killed.”